


this is not a love poem

by postcardmystery



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Burnplay, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Self-Harm, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:49:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/pseuds/postcardmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This was a bit fucking dramatic, even for you, darling," says Darren, and Geoffrey squints at him, nastily, taps his finger on the visiting room table in a frantic litany, says, "Don't tell me: Oliver."</p><p>"Don't tell me," says Darren, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke out, sardonic, "You <i>were</i> the play."</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is not a love poem

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for suicide, sectioning for mental health reasons, and burn-play.

Berlin is clean, and efficient, and covered in graffiti like greaspaint over the pale skin that Darren's trying his best to forget. He left Canada a pariah, but the sort of pariah who's already a legend, written in his own blood and brazen arrogance and a burn on his arm from a flashpot gone wrong. He left Canada because he had to, because he wanted to, because his world was too small and just seemed to keep getting smaller. He left Canada and he's writing his own fiction, his own biography, because he tells everyone that he never looked back.  
  
Berlin is everything he wanted it to be, and more. He still sees a flash of those cheekbones around every other corner. He still sees the only sneer that's ever matched his, in the careful dusk he spends, when he can, in a park near his apartment, reading Schiller and kicking pigeons. He still hears that nagging voice in the back of his head, but it's taken on tones that sound not even slightly like his own.  
  
Berlin is Berlin, and Darren Nichols is still alone. Once, that would have been enough, but it's been seven years since he was eighteen and wet behind the ears and in his first year at the conservatory, and now-- now alone is absence, not completion.   
  
He knows what  _enough_  looks like. He's a theatre director. He makes his living off stories of doomed love.  
  
  
  
  
"Come and talk to him, don't be so fucking  _selfish_ ," says Oliver, and Darren pauses to take a drag of his cigarette, to consider the London skyline, to remember  _quite_  how much he despises Oliver Welles, and says, "It's such a pity that you believed Geoffrey when he told you that I was a total fucking idiot, Oliver, because I am well aware that there's something you're not telling me and I couldn't really give a gigantic horse's shit what it is, except that you've done something utterly reprehensible to Geoffrey, and, quite frankly, you therefore deserve whatever you punishment is, and I have no interest in interfering."  
  
"You're the only one who can get through to him," says Oliver, desperate and there's something in his tone that could be guilt but could be nothing at all, and Darren takes another drag, says, "No, I think you'll find that's  _lithium_ , darling."  
  
  
  
  
"This was a bit fucking dramatic, even for you, darling," says Darren, and Geoffrey squints at him, nastily, taps his finger on the visiting room table in a frantic litany, says, "Don't tell me: Oliver."  
  
"Don't tell me," says Darren, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke out, sardonic, "You  _were_  the play."  
  
"Fuck you, Darren," says Geoffrey, curiously listless, and Darren leans in, smoke drifting up from his lips to pale the  _no smoking_  sign on the wall beside them, says, "Well, if you think it'd help."  
  
Geoffrey snorts, starts to come alive again, says, "I don't think I'm allowed."  
  
"Oh,  _darling_ ," says Darren, tapping ash on the floor, "When has that ever stopped you before?"

 

 

He brings Geoffrey everything but Shakespeare, and they argue until the hospital staff come to regard Darren Nichols, theatre director, walking fashion disaster, Geoffrey Tennant's postmodern nightmare, to be their worst enemy.  
  
"How do you think I feel?" grumbles Geoffrey, and Darren shrugs, says, "Can you feel  _anything_  on that dosage? Fuck, I'm impressed."  
  
"I'm not insane," says Geoffrey, a segment from a conversation they've never had, and Darren laughs, says, "That's nice for you, Geoffrey. I'll put up signs. You can be the only sane theatre director in Canada, how about that?"  
  
"They don't know what's wrong with me," says Geoffrey, his fingers clutching tight over the spine of a Pinter, and Darren snatches it from him, flips it open, says, "Let me talk to them. I have a few ideas."  
  
  
  
  
"I still can't say her name," says Geoffrey, ice on the windows of Darren's rented shitty car and cross-hatched scratches from his fingernails at his neck and his hair in dire need of a cut. He's smoking one of Darren's cigarettes and it's so cold his breath is coming out white whether it's the smoke or just the air in his lungs. He's exhausted and his eyes are ringed with purple and he's so beautiful that he makes Darren's chest hurt.  
  
"Darling, who cares?" says Darren, and starts the engine.  
  
  
  
  
They don't fuck and they don't fuck and they don't fuck until, of course, they do, Darren's wrists bruised and Geoffrey's not-at-all, carpet burn on Geoffrey's knees and the scar from Darren's rapier bright in the morning light. They fuck first and don't ask questions later and Darren lets Geoffrey push the tip of a cigarette into the soft flesh of his forearm, never makes him say her name, never asks him for anything except for everything, the way they always do.  
  
  
  
  
"You're going to burn this place down around your ears," says Darren, chainsmoking in the New Burbage parking lot, and Geoffrey pulls the cigarette from Darren's only slightly resisting fingers, grins that deadly grin, says, "Of course I am. Want to help?"


End file.
